In The Darkest Of Rooms
by TheQuillowTree
Summary: Wars change lives. Even Hermione Granger can't escape. Everything will change...


In the Darkest of Rooms

Author's Note: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the affiliated stuff. Sadly, it's all JK Rowling's.

Please please review, good or bad, as it would make my day! Happy reading!

Prologue

There are many shadows at Number Twelve Grimmauld place, though no where near as many years of memory. Sometime the knowing silence is so heavy, you feel as though your very soul is seen by the walls. Oddly enough, you would be correct.

Dusty and caked with grime though it may be, the house does not grow deaf, not whilst there is something worth listening to.

So as the shadows grow long and its memories longer, the old paintings open their eyes and ears to bear silent witness to the turmoils of war repeated...

A creak of a floorboard, a sharp intake of breath.

The urgent brush of knuckle over wood. The boy waits alone outside the door, but only for a minute, before a second figure slips out. She, judging by the shadow her shadow, is thin. As is he. Though taller his slimness is on the verge of making him look gaunt, sickly. She closes the door silently behind her, an uncommon event in a house so old it has become it's own orchestra.

He offers his hand and gives a small bow, inclining his head ever so slightly. She gives a curt nod in return, ignores his hand and methodically begins to tiptoe down the dark hall. Momentarily fazed by her refusal, he doesn't begin his walk down the seemingly barren hall until she is nearly invisible in the blackness. Then he too melts into the night.

Even in shadow he holds his head high. Pride perhaps? Or the unbreakable habit of a broken man?

The two figures are no longer visible to our most alert portraits, and most can only guess where they end up in that labyrinth of a house. Leaving, is out of the question. The newly frequented main halls would have heard. would have alerted the entire house by now anyway.

So they remain within the old house, but where?

The Drawing room? Not likely. The pianos haunted.

The kitchen? No, they would be seen by midnight fridge raiders, heard by squeaky chairs.

Any of the innumerable spare rooms would do though. Rooms so long unused the portraits cannot open their eyes for the dust. The dangerous objects placed behind closed doors, places no one had seen for a decade or two.

Behind such doors there is only sound. Not only because of unmovable dust, but the impenetrable darkness of something last seen by the ancestors.

How fitting that here amid the forgotten oaths of old, and the fleeting moans of pleasure and pain, the cries of loneliness and lust, that new life be created.

Chapter one

A little pink plus was all it took to send Hermione Granger, witch extraordinaire's, life come crashing down.

The plus sat in her hand, fuzzy, but there.

She shook it.

Maybe it was a minus? It was hard to read...

She shook it harder, gritting her perfect teeth.

It was still there. Now clear as crystal.

She leaned back against the decaying bathroom tile, and said the only word that the eloquent Hermione Granger could use to some up her situation.

"Fuck."

Ironic that she should choose this word, because it was exactly what she had been screaming as he thrust inside her over and over, bringing them to orgasm, and this. Yep, her moan of "Fuck..." was an excellent way of putting it.

She slumped against the door, a thousand questions dancing through her head. For an eternity she just stared at the celing overhead.

Despite Molly Weasley's best efforts over the past three years, they were losing the war on this house.

The tiles in this bathroom were disintegrating at her touch, there was water damage in the cracked celing, and earwigs reined supreme. They were losing the war on this house, and the war against Voldemort. For every bit of leverage gained, every inch, they were set back even more, their mission rendered useless. Grimmauld Place was the center of it all, the hub of activity. Order members came in and out delivering reports, sleeping or eating when they could. These day's the atmosphere seemed significantly more depressing, like the house was able to draw the secret doubts out of even the bravest and add them to the thick, damp air. The air had never felt more alien in her lungs then it did these days. And just as her lungs couldn't recognize the air, her brain seemed unable to register the results of both her muggle and magical pregnancy test.

Positive.

'Sorry what?' her brain couldn't process the word.

POsiTIve.

'What? Can you speak up?' she shook her head trying to clear the fog that had settled over her senses.

A thousand bright lights pierced the fog.

P+O+S+I+T+I+V+E!

She groaned. Positive, as in yes.

As in that's why you've been feeling light headed.

As in that's why Molly's food has tasted terrible lately.

As in something growing INSIDE you!

As in result of sex, result of-of-

HER+HIM.

No, surley not?

The stick did not change it's mind.

POSITIVE.

Then in a moment of clarity, Hermione Granger became hysterical. She burst into tears, vomited into the toilet beside her, and reached the ignorant bliss of unconsciousness just as footsteps began to thunder up the stairs towards her.


End file.
